Tuesday, August 16, 2011

dumped

Today I spent several hours writing a piece about facing the future without regrets. When I went to post it the screen went blank. Back on again the entire piece was gone. The computer took all my work away with one click. It's too late to write it over. But I will live to write another day.

In the meantime here is a reprint from the summer of 2009.

Daring Do

Greatness is a road leading towards the unknown.

Charles de Gaulle
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Star Trek

"The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see."
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Those who are given the opportunity and freedom to follow a line of study as far as it can take them are blessed with the possibility of discovering areas of unrevealed knowledge and understanding, what no one has ever encountered before, where no one has ever been. Mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, anthropologists, those practicing on the esoteric edges of science, architects, composers of music and, yes, also poets, when engaged to their utmost, may reach the end of the traveled path, step into an unknown territory of discovery, put down a marker for the future and try to describe what they find.

I don't know much about science, but I know something about art. The first and every time I see "The Piano Lesson" by Matisse I am taken gently by the hand and led into a world of painting I know little about yet.

I have heard Beethoven's "Grosse Fugue" for string quartet many times and it is still a mystery to me. What was it that Beethoven saw in his deafness and what was he trying to tell us about it?

On what obscure mountain top was Shakespeare when he wrote "The mightiest space in fortune nature brings to join like likes and kiss like native things."? And what was he saying when he wrote to lead us there "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weigh their pains in sense and do suppose what hath been cannot be."?

The challenge has been made, the door has been left open for others to follow, for you and I to approach the mystery, to go one step beyond, to find another treasure, another magic stone on which is written a new name no one knows.

The air is thin and hard to breathe, the way is treacherous and the terrain frustratingly difficult to describe, but, though we may be standing on the shoulders of the great ones who went before us, the experience of our own genius can only be won by moving off of the shoulders and placing a foot carefully but steadily down onto a step we cannot see.

As much as we love the computer, it can be frustrating some days with deletions, scam junk and viruses....guess we have to go with the flow and hang in there in hopes tomorrow we'll have a great computer day.

About Me

I am an actor and broadcaster. I am grateful to have spent my life in the arts. Now I also write and paint. I am humbly trying to overcome selfishness, it's effects and regrets. I read history, philosophy, psychology and religion. My desire is to share what I have with the world while trying to make sense of a difficult life and enjoying the journey, no rituals, no rules, no summations.